Just got back from Hawaii, where we were doing a lot of interviews and photographs for a communication audit for a client in Honolulu. More on that later. I was blown away by one high-ranking individual who used much of my one-on-one time with him to educate me on the "spirit of Aloha." Of course, everyone knows that Aloha means hello and goodbye. But when the Hawaii license plate refers to the place as "The Aloha State," it's not saying that it is the "hello, goodbye state." This very kamaaina gentleman explained to me, with great passion, that the spirit…

Well, I am now officially old. Closer to 101 than to 1. To celebrate, Anne and I went on a tour of restaurants we'd never been to. They were all very nice. But the most note-worthy had to be West First Wood-Fire Pizza in Hendersonville. The place was started about a year ago by our friend, Scott, an artisan baker, once-and-future bee keeper, and all around interesting guy. It's in an old warehouse looking building, all exposed brick. There is a metal staircase right in the middle as you come in the front door, leading up to a mezzanine. The…

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I have been a Pittsburgh Stillers fan since ... well, for as long as I can remember. So it was painful to see anyone challenging the dynastic unchallengability of my 70s stillers. It was very frustrating to watch the Cheaters get away with video-taping opponents signals-a practice that you just know they used against good teams (like the 2001 Stillers), if they used it against wet noodles like the NY not Yets. But I digress. It was maddening to see them run up the score on weaker teams-and…

The nightmare scenario. We have an automated backup system for our accounting software. Up until now, this system would check once a day for any changes in the database. And if there were any, it would save that day's database over the previous day's database, as a "backup." Anyone see any problems with this approach. Well, we didn't really either, until aforementioned nightmare scenario. A weekend corruption! Over the weekend, for reasons we can't put our finger on, the software dumped a WHOLE BUNCH of data-like all of our payroll history, all of our receivables, some of or long-term assets,…